Eddie Leonski

Edward Joseph Leonski (December 12, 1917 – November 9, 1942) was a United States Army soldier during World War II. He was also a serial killer responsible for the strangling murders of three women in Melbourne, Australia. Leonski was known as both the "Brownout Strangler", given Melbourne's wartime status of keeping low lighting (not as stringent as a wartime blackout) and also as the "Singing Strangler" due to his self-confessed motive for the killings being a twisted fascination with female voices, especially when they were singing, and his claim that he killed the women to "get at their voices."

Early life

Born into a Polish-American family in New Jersey, Leonski grew up in an abusive, alcoholic family, and one of his brothers was committed to a mental institution. According to a psychologist who interviewed Leonski during his trial, his mother had been overprotective and controlling. Leonski had been bullied by other neighborhood kids and called a mama's boy. Accordingly, the psychologist ruled that Leonski's crimes were born of his resentment and hatred of his mother and thus constituted "symbolic matricide."